A Weekend of Doubting Our Principles

It’s Friday, which means it’s time to look out across the brooding river toward the lights on the far shore, and wonder where the current will take us when we cross through the matches ahead. I’ll be testing the waters at…

Saturday

Ghana – Ivory Coast (17:00 GMT, 12 PM US Eastern Time) — The third-place match in the Africa Cup of Nations could easily have been the final, and has the potential to be a really delirious game: two attacking teams, one the home side in the tournament, playing for pride in a fantastic atmosphere with no reason for caution and no real pressure to win. No telling whether the teams will be motivated after their semi-final losses, but I’m looking forward to this more than to the relatively dull slate of Premier League matches (I’m talking to you, Middlesbrough v. Fulham) on Saturday.

Sevilla – Barcelona (21:00 GMT, 4 PM US ET) — A high-stakes match between a Sevilla side that seems to be finding its form and a depleted Barcelona playing without seven of their usual starters. Sevilla are just one spot out of a European place, and Barça are closing in on Madrid at the top, so both clubs could use the win.

Sunday

Man Utd – Man City (13:30 GMT, 8:30 AM US ET) — Will the Man City supporters fall into Man Utd’s diabolical trap and ruin the minute of silence for the victims of the ’58 Munich air crash? Will they prove themselves to be no true gentlemen? Forum threads grow like vines across the stone wall of the internet. The game might be worth watching, too.

Chelsea – Liverpool (16:00 GMT, 11 AM US ET) — Without Torres, Drogba, Essien, et. al., and with Liverpool now only nominally in the big four, this match may break records for failing to live up to hype. I’ll probably turn to the Cup of Nations final at noon, but it must be said in the face of a potential Chelsea victory that Rafa Benitez is a genius and the fact that Tom Hicks is a bastard is all the proof you should need.

Cameroon – Egypt (17:00 GMT, 12 PM US ET) — Now that Angola is out (after a valiant quarterfinal loss to Egypt), I’m not supporting anyone in particular in the Africa Cup of Nations, and I’m looking forward to the final largely as a clash of styles: the patient, methodical, defensively sound Egyptians vs. the more erratic and inspired Cameroon. The Indomitable Lions (still a preening nickname, by the way) have all the stars on their side, but Egypt have been the most balanced group and arguably the best overall team in the tournament. It should be a fascinating match; I hope there are people in the stands to see it.

What else are you interested in? Will Udinese – Juventus be exciting, or is that asking too much? I’m always eager to hear your thoughts about whatever matches you see, so feel free to drop a line in the comments section if you see the light in the window and need a place to rest.

A Weekend of Doubting Our Principles

Ghana has beaten the Ivory Coast 4-2 after scoring three goals in the last 20 minutes of play. I missed a lot of the second half, so I can’t comment definitively, but what I saw was a nice third-place game: relatively fluent, deliberate attacks with plenty of short passes and not much urgency. The Ivory Coast kept looking like it was going to execute a half-speed version of Josimar’s goal against Northern Ireland in ’86, but never quite managed to make it happen. The build-up that led to Sanogo’s second was a treat to watch, though.

It has to be said that the defenses were not exactly cutthroat. The goalkeepers’ dives took place in a five-step process, and you had time to notice and catalogue every step.

Man City are up 2-0 at Old Trafford at halftime in a good up-and-down game. United have had most of the possession and some screamers on goal—the gap between Tevez and scoring at one point was so small that only science could measure it—but City have capitalized on a couple of breakdowns in the United defense. Vassell scored on his own rebound after van der Sar made a falling parry of his first shot, and Benjani celebrated his debut for City by slipping the ball through in a moment of mass confusion around the goal.

Sir Alex had declared that United needed not only to win, but to win in style to mark the anniversary of Munich, and it’s a safe bet that the ghosts of the past have never flown out of a hair dryer as furiously as they are doing right now.

The kits in this game are incredible. United are wearing historical replicas from ’58, City all-blue sponsorless kits that look better than any normal kit in the Premier League. Why do we need all the swoopy lines and cell phone ads? These kits are heraldic. It’s nice.

UPDATE: Still 2-0 at the 60 minute mark, and from the sound of things in Old Trafford, the crowd have decided to go on observing the minute of silence right on till the end of the game.

UPDATE: Carrick scores in injury time, but City hold on for a 2-1 win and their first sweep of the Manchester Derby in 38 years. And their supporters respected the silence. Good day for the light-blue half (two-thirds?) of Manchester.

Surprisingly entertaining game at Stamford Bridge so far in the 53rd minute. It’s 0-0, but if Crouch could do anything with his head Liverpool would be up by 37.

I’m going to try to keep an eye on the rest of Liverpool-Chelsea while streaming the final in Africa. If at some point I credit Eto’o with a goal for Chelsea you’ll know it was beyond me.

UPDATE: 0-0 at Stamford Bridge. Meanwhile, in Ghana, Egypt win 1-0 after a disciplined performance. Kameni, the Cameroon goalkeeper, played the match of his life, but the Egyptian attack was relentless. And on the other side of the pitch Cameroon were disorganized and Eto’o was almost invisible even before he suffered what looked like a debilitating hamstring injury. Not a great day for a Cameroonian Barcelona fan. Egypt deserve their win.

I felt awful for the Cameroonian defense, which tried so hard but just couldn’t keep out the Egyptians’ focused attack. But I agree that Egypt were the more deserving team; they dominated both sides of the pitch, even if at times they had an almost Mourinho-esque quality of skilled dullness about them. Cameroon were just so toothless in attack, which is not a good quality for an Indomitable Lion to possess.

Right on about Ahmed Hassan. The story of the match, and arguably of the tournament, seemed to be the strict discipline of Egypt triumphing over the looser and more erratic style of their opponents, and for me he was the exemplar of that discipline today.

Your latter point is spot-on. I wonder how much this is helped by the fact many of the Egyptians play on the same teams in their domestic league. I also think this fact led us European-orientated football fans to underrate them coming in to the tournament.

Tom, that seems right to me. I certainly knew less about the Egyptian players at the start of the tournament than about the stars from many other teams, and I probably didn’t realize just how good they were even after some of their early successes. This would be more excusable if it wasn’t, from what I understand, the second straight time this has happened in the tournament.